a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Game 54 @ GS: Most Unfocused Recap Ever

So…I was all set to recap the game, but I could not get over this one particular Getty image. Instead of spending the past half hour writing up a recap, I spent it in Photoshop. Here is what I came up with (the first has text, so click to enlarge):

I guess it’s just as well that I didn’t produce a recap, because by the end of the game (despite the late Jazz collapse and the Dubs getting way too close), I was mainly rooting for AK to get the 5×5. He came up a little short thanks to Jerry only playing him 34 minutes, but it so would have made my day, week, month. OK, maybe not month, but probably week.

Couple of notes:
–With Memo out (congratulations to the Okur family on the arrival of Junior Money Okur), AK jumped ball (jump-balled?). Is anyone keeping count? Has he played all five positions for the Jazz now? Also, Dunking AK is the Fairest AK of them all.

–Classic Boonerism of the night: “Ronnie Price ran up the leg of Curry from the backside.”

–Deron’s shot is MIA; CJ took many shots, including 8 threes (Jerry almost passed out). The set ones went in, the jacking ones did not. Boozer put up huge numbers, and HustleSap had four sweet blocks.

–This should really be its own “Who Dressed Him” post, but Nellie was going for the Naked Man look tonight. Maybe it was a distraction tactic, but even Getty wanted no part of this. Luckily, I screen-capped:

I’ll close with a couple of what-ifs:

–What if chemistry issues or whatever it was hadn’t had the Jazz by the balls for most of 2009; we would maybe be half a game out of the top seed in the West rather than half a seed out of second (that was a very underwhelming way of telling you that we are now just half a game behind Denver for the second seed, which is quite incredible given how the Jazz started the season).

–What if CJ had been drafted by the Warriors and stayed on the Warriors for his entire career with Nellie as his coach. He’d be the NBA All-Time leading 3PA by the time he retired. How sad such a legacy was derailed by fate.

–What if AK played on the Warriors. A monster, the likes of which the NBA has never seen, would be unleashed and he would destroy the league. His blocks would end careers. That’s a slightly exaggerated way of saying that Andrei would be MVP and Defensive POY. And be a weapon (AK-47 reference). A weapon of mass basketball destruction.